The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its weekly jobless claims for the week ending July 1. Claims dropped by a much larger amount than expected, down to 254,000 from the prior week’s 268,000 (revised to 270,000).

Reuters had called for a reading of 270,000 claims, and Dow Jones (Wall Street Journal) was calling for 267,000. Bloomberg’s consensus estimate was 269,000, and its Econoday range was set at 255,000 to 271,000. This means that the weekly claims report was better than all expectations.

Thursday’s report showed, as usual, that no special factors had an impact on this week’s initial claims report. This reading now has hit 70 consecutive weeks in which initial claims came in below 300,000, a continuation of the longest streak since 1973.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.6% for the week ending June 25. Another report on the advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment (continuing jobless claims) during the week ending June 25 was 2,124,000, down by some 44,000 from the previous week’s revised level.

Investors and economists generally use the seasonally adjusted data in economic reports. It is still useful in some instances to look at the unadjusted data to see if (or why) there are discrepancies. The BLS report said:

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 267,137 in the week ending July 2, an increase of 3,714 (or 1.4 percent) from the previous week. The seasonal factors had expected an increase of 21,074 (or 8.0 percent) from the previous week. There were 303,585 initial claims in the comparable week in 2015.

Markets were marginally higher early Thursday, and a better than expected ADP payrolls report has given some hope that Friday’s unemployment and payrolls reports will be better than some have feared.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was last seen up 13 points to 17,932 and the S&P 500 was last seen up 3 points to 2,103.

Bloomberg’s consensus estimate for June’s nonfarm payrolls is 180,000 and private sector payrolls is 170,000. Those numbers will be released Friday morning at 8:30 am Eastern Time.

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